Forex

Tantalum

Tantalum

Final Approach
Joined
Feb 22, 2017
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San_Diego_Pilot
There are a lot of gimmicks out there, but does anyone have any first hand experience actually making money with Forex?

I've played with demo accounts and while the potential upside is high since you trade on leverage I never really found any predictable pattern to it. You would have days making $10,000 fake dollars, then the next day lose it all. the candle and box plot charts would appear to give you a strong tell, then 10 seconds later they completely change

So anyone actually made money on this?

Finding meaningful data on line is nearly impossible, most are either blogs that contain no real valuable content or various people trying to sell you a $500 "secret"

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Not sure this is the right discussion forum for this... Maybe better luck in a online forum that is more oriented toward financials and investing?
 
There are two issues I see with trying to make money trading. The first it that it is a negative sum game, the amount of money coming out in terms of profits will be less than the amount of money put in by all parties because of the commissions you'll pay. The second issue is that there are players in these markets that are vastly better equipped than you are, especially in the Forex markets, where a country's central bank may choose to intervene. You'd basically be bringing a pocketknife to a nuclear war.
 
I have known people who have made money on Forex. I am not one of them. :(

I've more or less given up on it when compared to normal stocks. The thing with Forex is that you basically have to try to make money by taking advantages of swings one way or another. There's a certain amount of pattern/cyclical nature to it, but more than anything it's a question of which currencies do you expect to change relative to other currencies.

Stocks you can make money with pretty casually, although one can argue that you're still best off just investing in an index fund. I think Forex is harder to make money in unless you devote a good amount of time to understanding how it all works.
 
Thanks guys for the input. Seems like a big risk, but figured it didn't hurt to ask, there are some smart folks on here so wondered if someone had found some success with it

Ted DuPuis said:
try to make money by taking advantages of swings one way or another
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That's what's so tempting about it, the cycles are small and at the right "zoom" level (minute charts, hour charts, etc.) there appears to be a pattern, but those patterns vanish when you refocus, so part of me thinks the patterns are perceived and not actual

I'll stay off the live Forex accounts until I have some money I don't mind losing, but I guess at that point I'd be better off saving that for aviation!!
 
Tantalum said:
That's what's so tempting about it, the cycles are small and at the right "zoom" level (minute charts, hour charts, etc.) there appears to be a pattern, but those patterns vanish when you refocus, so part of me thinks the patterns are perceived and not actual

I'll stay off the live Forex accounts until I have some money I don't mind losing, but I guess at that point I'd be better off saving that for aviation!!
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The folks I know who've made big money in it are looking at the big political changes that are likely to make huge changes in currency. For example one person I know did very well buying up Yen in late 2012 when something happened there that caused a big shift.
 
FormerHangie said:
... there are players in these markets that are vastly better equipped than you are, especially in the Forex markets, where a country's central bank may choose to intervene. You'd basically be bringing a pocketknife to a nuclear war.
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This.

Actually, I think the best way to make money in forex trading is to write a book and sell it to suckers. I have the same opinion about the house flipping market.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
The folks I know who've made big money in it are looking at the big political changes that are likely to make huge changes in currency. For example one person I know did very well buying up Yen in late 2012 when something happened there that caused a big shift.
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Sorry to say the plural of "anecdotes" is not "data." Certainly a few get lucky once in a while. You'll never hear from the majority who lost money, though.
 
airdale said:
Sorry to say the plural of "anecdotes" is not "data." Certainly a few get lucky once in a while. You'll never hear from the majority who lost money, though.
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Sure you do. I'm one of them.
 
Tantalum said:
Love the signs on the sides of roads with some obscure phone number and "house flip opportunity make $15K per week"
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Especially the ones hand written in sharpie that are barely legible seeking "real estate apprentices" who want to learn to make $10k/month.

I assume they teach you to make signs and put them at intersections once you pay the fee.
 
Me trading vs computer: computer trading wins (this is true for short-term trading, but not necessarily so for long term investing; I see forex as "trading", not as "investing").
 
There are some that make money gambling in Vegas. There are some that make money with Forex. The odds are against it in both cases. The ones making money, are the brokers (Forex etc). Only people I ever heard of in Forex lost everything they committed in a few months. The stock market is not like that. The odds are in your favor. Why? Because over the long term, stocks have gone up....
 
I'm not very familiar with Forex trading, but isn't it a zero sum game - if you make money then someone else has to lose?
 
ColoPilot said:
I'm not very familiar with Forex trading, but isn't it a zero sum game - if you make money then someone else has to lose?
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It's a zero sum game before costs. After costs, it is not. That's exactly the same as stock trading; zero sum before costs. The average of all the stock traders is the market average, and most stock traders fail to achieve the market average due to their costs. Research "S&P SPIVA Report Card" and "S&P Manager Persistance Report Card" to understand. The fundamental paper (by a Nobel prize winner) on this subject is here: https://web.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/art/active/active.htm
 
Short term stocks behave like a zero sum game, but longer term stocks are not a zero sum game because the market grows and the number of players and the amount of money increases. Stock OPTIONS are a zero sum game. Costs are not just in the brokerage fees, they are also in the spread.
 
coloradobluesky said:
Short term stocks behave like a zero sum game, but longer term stocks are not a zero sum game because the market grows and the number of players and the amount of money increases. Stock OPTIONS are a zero sum game. Costs are not just in the brokerage fees, they are also in the spread.
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Yes. To be more exact, stock trading is a zero sum game relative to the market average. Ref the Sharpe paper.
 
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